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New AFL-CIO chief Trumka pledges to lead labor in fight to rebuild middle class

Date Posted: September 25 2009

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

PITTSBURGH (PAI) – Promising what visually and verbally seems to be an image of muscular leadership of organized labor, former coal miner Richard L. Trumka took office Sept. 16 as the AFL-CIO’s new president.

After nomination and election by acclamation at the federation’s convention in Pittsburgh, the 60-year-old native of nearby Nemacolin approached the podium to a song whose refrain was “Stand me up at the gates of hell – and I won’t back down.”

Once there, the former linebacker who refused, a bio film said, to miss games even with a broken arm, vowed to lead crusades to re-create the U.S. middle class and to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.

“I swear to you that come hell or high water, we will win that act and bring unionism to every worker in the U.S.,” Trumka declared, to thundering cheers.

Trumka takes office, as he pointed out, at a time when organized labor is politically resurgent – having been a strong factor in Democratic President Barack Obama’s election –  but also under attack from multi-national corporate interests worldwide.  “Brothers and sisters, the corporate agenda does not end at the water’s edge, and neither can ours,” he said.

The centerpieces of that labor agenda are helping to restore the U.S. middle class through key causes: Comprehensive health care reform, passage of EFCA and re-creation of U.S. industrial might, this time in well-paying jobs in “green” industries.

He termed health care in particular “a moral crusade.”

“We heard from the man who, to my way of thinking, is proving to be the most pro-worker president in our time, and he called on us to join the great moral crusade of our time.  He asked us to mobilize our members, their families and working people all across this nation to join him.

“Well, today our answer to President Obama is: ’Yes, we can…and Yes, we will!’”

“Like you we know the way to make it happen is to build” a health care “system that offers care Americans need at a price Americans can afford,” he declared.  But in a warning even to labor’s friend in the White House, Trumka said that health care system must include a public option to compete with the insurers, slow the rising costs of health care and provide a home for all whom the insurers refuse to cover. 

If Obama walks away from the public option, labor will walk away from health care reform.  “Mr. President, so long as you stand for that public option we are going to stand with you….There’s a difference between declaring a victory and winning one” in the health care crusade,’ Trumka said.  “We intend to win victory, not claim it.”

Without the public option, Trumka concluded, health care “may be a lot of things, but it sure as hell isn’t reform.”

Trumka also had muscular words for the business community, including the insurance companies, complete with “death panels” that have “a stranglehold” over the health care system and over people’s lives.  He called insurers “fundamentally immoral.”

As for the rest of business, he said that “you may own the iron, you may own the coal, you may own the banks, and the newspapers and even the politicians.  But you don’t own me, you don’t own my family, you don’t own my union and you never, ever, ever, ever, ever will!”

But Trumka also had strong words for his fellow unionists. Repeating phrases from earlier speeches, he said unions must change their cultures – including the organizing methods and emphases – to listen to younger workers and respond to their demands, not the other way around. 

He’s assigned that task to his successor as Secretary-Treasurer, IBEW official Elizabeth Shuler, 39, and also chosen by acclamation for the AFL-CIO’s #2 post.  Trumka said the fed would convene a youth summit in spring 2010 to listen to those voices. 

“And we need to finally come to terms with the act that union halls that should have been meeting grounds for understanding have often been breeding grounds for bigotry,” said Trumka.  He gained national notice last year for a blunt speech at the Steelworkers convention, telling the white working class – Obama’s weakest group –  why they should vote for the African-American Democrat. It swung many votes.

“Millions of people of color and millions of women paid a staggering price” for past bigotry, Trumka told AFL-CIO delegates. “We have a moral responsibility to take benefits of union representation to those whom the labor movement has walked past.”

And while Trumka declared that missing unions should rejoin the AFL-CIO and reunite the House of Labor, he warned that 1,000 organizers would be sent to help any union that is being raided by another.  That’s a direct shot at both the Carpenters and the Service Employees, both of whom have been blasted for raiding. 

Arlene Holt Baker was also elected by acclamation to her first full term in the AFL-CIO’s #3 post of executive vice president.